I continue to be intrigued, and appalled, by the unfolding scandal over the firing of at least 9 U.S. Attorneys, some because they refused to prosecute weak or phony cases of voter fraud. The pressures put on these U.S. Attorneys were but part of a larger political strategy to win elections in battleground states by depressing voter turnout among demographic groups most likely to vote for Democratic Party candidates by propagating the myth of widespread polling place fraud. Indeed, the most recent academic study available confirms the Democrats’ fears that stringent voter ID laws reduce turnout significantly among minority groups.

We learned from Rick Hasen, a distinguished California election law professor, that the idea of massive polling place voter fraud is not just unproven, it is “inherently incredible”. Hasen notes that the Department of Justice in the past five years has devoted “unprecedented resources to ferreting out polling-place fraud…and appears to have found not a single prosecutable case across the country.” The political motivation behind those who have supported such laws is no longer to be guessed at. A former director of the Republican Party in Texas, where a battle over a photo ID proposal is currently raging, said that a strict voter identification requirement currently being considered in that State would depress the legitimate vote of the poor and immigrant populations and thereby add as much as 3% to the Republican vote, more than enough to change the outcome of many close elections, particularly in a State such as Texas with a growing immigrant population.

Over at Advance Indiana, blogger Gary Welsh takes Democrats to task for continuing to wage the legal battle over the Indiana photo ID law and allegedly “saying nothing” about the numerous problems voters encountered during Marion County’s primary election administered for the first time in over two decades by a Democratic Clerk. I fail to see any equivalency there. First, though the primary election-day problems here were the result of negligence or ineptitude, they were not part of a systematic effort to suppress the vote among poor people by imposing overly restrictive, unnecessary and burdensome obstacles to voting.

Second, every Democrat I know is angry and disappointed about the primary election day difficulties, some of which prevented qualified persons from voting. There is no excuse for a polling place not to open on an election day, or for voters to be grossly inconvenienced by delays and other election-day snafus. But the problems voters experienced are not the solely the fault of any one political party, they are systemic. Nor are they correctible other than through bipartisan solutions. If I were the Democratic Party chair, I would invite my Republican counterpart to appoint inspectors in predominantly Republican precincts. I would invite him to play an equal role in vastly reducing the number of precincts prior to the 2008 elections. I would also encourage continued experimentation with regional voting centers which would be open on weekends and evenings at least two full weeks before election day. And I would challenge him to join me in sponsoring legislation to allow for no-fault absentee voting and election day registration.

Our parents and grandparents made immense personal sacrifices, and many died, so that we who followed might be able to enjoy the benefits of living in a free and democratic society. The right to vote is too fragile and too important to entrust entirely to partisan officials of the two major political parties.

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